In gay culture, what causes one to be drawn to certain characteristics of opposite gender?
(I am considering this from a strictly psychological point of view)
For gay males, for example, the common stereotypical behavior includes being more nitpicky, superficial (emphasis on keeping up with appearances), and sensitive (outwardly dramatic). For females, it mostly comes out to being more macho, overly logical/linear, and chivalrous. I would claim that most of these characteristics are selective, as they emphasize rather a small (and unlikable?) portion of the behavior found in the opposite sex.
If there is a psychological attraction that drives one to these characteristics is it because one admires (envies) them in the opposite sex and wishes to possess them by appropriating them, or is it because one despises these characteristics in the opposite sex and wishes to internalize them to master them (as, for instance, a child might unwittingly become just like his parent later in life, even though he vowed not to ever become like him, thus hinting at a potentially unresolved internal conflict/trauma).
In regards to the latter, I mentioned this because there is a theory that claims that gay men become gay (and adopt certain feminine characteristics) because of their unresolved issues/hatred towards women in their early life, and I wanted to explore to see if there is a validity to this theory.
(a note on characteristic of chivalry mentioned on the gay female side: a woman may interpret this type of behavior as desirable or undesirable. If a man, say, opens a door for a woman, she may react in one of two ways: 1. she may be flattered and interpret it as a sign of respect, or 2. she may be insulted and interpret it as a sign of paternalism. So, it is possible to see a butch female interpreting this behavior as both desirable and something to be possessed or undesirable and something to be imitated and mastered).
The bolded section is logically flawed. Read this. It explains why homosexuality occurs.
Chivalry is a matter of traceable male-dominated traits. A “strong” man opens the door for his petite, beautiful, and feminine lover as a display of symbolism.
Homosexual men & women display this “strong” trait openly, but don’t know why… (because they’re stupid)
Why does homosexuality exist? There are too many reasons for me to go through…
Why does heterosexuality exist? This question is just as complex.
Where should I start?
My personal thoughts on the matter is that since men are feminized in order to survive in today’s social sphere, men are willing to submit themselves fully to the sexual desires of another man. However, I’m not sure where the weakness is found, in one person or both of them. Regardless, homosexuality is a weakness of humanity rather than a strength. Regardless of whether it is practiced in a pair of men or women, it goes against the purpose of sex lived out by 100,000 years of humanity beforehand. Humanity could not afford the “mutation” of homosexuality at more crucial moments in history. Now, we can afford it. So, the situation is ripe for many acts of hedonism. When an environment is ripe, many plants come to fruit.
The fruits won’t bother me though, since power remains where it belongs, in the “nuclear” families. The strongest bond between human beings is between the strongest male & female together. Within every generation of humanity there lives one archetypical male & female that all others on the entire planet envy, always. This is how ideals stay reborn.
Yes, there are many ways to approach homosexuality (environmental, genetics, upbringing,etc.) and I do not completely rule out these possibilities, but here I want to concentrate mostly on psychological reasons, assuming, for the most part, that homosexuality is rooted in psychology, rather than genetics.
I can see what you are saying but it does not explain the incorporation of opposite sex behavior completely. Two points on this: you believe that it is the feminizing social environment that is causing men to become gay, (as you say, in order to adapt to changing environment). But this approach does not explain butch behavior on the female side. If it is more advantageous for someone (anyone) to become more feminine and if such social etiquette grants success, then it would, in fact, be disadvantageous to adopt macho, competitive masculine behavior, yet many gay females (butch females) adopt exactly these characteristics.
The second point is the one that I am mostly focused on and that is the selective incorporation of the behavior of the opposite sex. The feminine characteristics of gay male, for example, do not include all feminine characteristics found in a straight female. There is more to a woman than being bitchy and superficial, and although a male is not a biological female, some of the psychological characteristics that are found in women and defined as feminine, could be, but are not chosen to be incorporated into gay behavior. Why?
I think there are many types of gay-lesbian.
Those who imitate opposite sex in exaggerated and maybe selective manner might be similar to kids imitating others to have fun. I guess they indulge in their self-image of personifying the femaleness/maleness they are somehow attracted (or they find interesting/important).
It might be coming from acting even more uglier bitch than their mother/girlfriend/female-teacher/etc, in case of this type of gay, as you’ve suggested.
For some of them, maybe they hate females and so they act as bad female to revenge by denigrating female image … but I’m not so sure.
Anyway, I don’t think this type of people are gay by genetical/biological reason, principally.
I would say that one type of genetical/biological gay people are feminine without much effort, and they don’t go all the way to be bitchy behavior.
Gay types I’ve seen:
Macho gay: Biker gay (prison incubated?), military/racist/Nazi fashion gay, sporty/athletic gay.
They don’t necessarily show feminine behavior. I guess they love maleness more than females …
Natural gay: Naturally feminine. Sometime bisexual (to cover the feminine nature or being gay). But sexually speaking, I guess they prefer to be taken by males. They may go with Macho gays.
Bitch (or acting) gay: They love feminine things. And they act and exaggerate. But sometime, they are more feminine than females.
Younger male lover gay: They can be pedophile. I guess they like to take younger males, probably for psychological reason.
Drag Queens: I don’t know what to say …
Some gay may have female-phobia, while others (like bisexual males) may not.
Bisexual behavior might be coming from strong and open sexual appetite or reasons.
And probably there are subtypes and mixture of them.
I’ve seen similar differences in female gay, too.
Anyway, why don’t you go and ask real gays in gay community.
Bitchy gays would be very happy to answer you, most probably. Many of them are pretty talkative.
Also, it might help you to understand if you separate psychological inclination and sexual inclination.
Although they might be mixed/intermingled, Physical and psychological attraction can be distinctive and well different.
The problem I immediately ran into with your question was its psychological basis.
Homosexuality is rooted in more complex reasons that are of both nature & nurture. Here’s some deeper thoughts:
Naturally, some men trend to be more “masculine” or “feminine” than other men just as some men are taller and some men are shorter. The same applies to women. Some women trend to be more “masculine” or “feminine” than other women just as some women are prettier and some women are uglier. All this means is that some people are born with advantages and some are born with disadvantages in terms of survivability. The more chances a man has to survive and live a “successful” life, the more “masculine” this man is. The more chances a woman has to survive and live a “successful” life, the more “feminine” this woman is. The archetypical male & female separate in a degree of masculinity-femininity as the human population grows.
So, these “traits” come from seemingly nowhere, as soon as a particular baby is born. However, once the baby is born, then its natural predisposition can be manipulated to exponentially enhance or dampen the affects of its direction. A masculine male may be culled to be stronger or weaker than his spirit by force. This is how socialization and institutionalization works. Masculine males are tamed. Some need much more force to be tamed than others. Some remain “wild” and “free”.
The results of this nature vs. nurture balance appear in sexual gratification. When sex becomes superficial, hedonism develops. After a man & woman have children, then it doesn’t really matter who has sex with who or what. However, morality came about as a means to prevent & end hedonism. Religion was only a temporary cure. The power of morality rises and wanes throughout time. We are currently at a downswing in its hold over the Western World right now. Hedonism is on the rise and it actually creates problems.
Homosexuality creates problems by self-replicating. This is fine as long as it does not pose a threat over the idealized male & female relationship–one of heterosexuality. As soon as homosexuality physically threatens aspects of the archetypical male & female relationship, then moral decay and decadence occurs throughout a society. This appears as a corruption of human values–superficiality. When this happens, the ideal male & female relationship must be reinforced and violently reinserted into a given society/culture. If it is not, then other societies/cultures will rebel against the “empire” and destroy it either from the outside-in (terrorism) or more likely from the inside-out (revolution). In America, since we have nuclear weapons, this will most likely take place from the inside-out (an implosion).
The psychological effects for homosexuality in either men or women come from its acceptability to be homosexual. Because the social ramifications for homosexuality is relaxed, it will occur with more & more frequency. Eventually, a degree of bi-sexuality will envelope the populace and orgies will become more & more commonplace. Human sexuality will spread like wildfire in a mood of superficiality. And sex is superficial nowadays (as I see it anyway). All that is happening is that the sacredness of the human sex act is being degraded. It is no longer spiritual, sacred, or worthwhile to have sex with one another, because it doesn’t mean anything. This is a problem (I think–I’m pretty confident about it).
The power, the reasons, and the results are all in flux right now–the way it has always been.
You have presented a whole spectrum of gay behavior, though I would say that it is the bitchy, drama queen aspect of gay behavior (with respect to males) that I am most curious about. It is a phenomenon perhaps akin to this that draws my attention (because of its evident eccentricity) and makes me think that there might be underlying psychological reasons (unresolved issues) involved.
I don’t think that such a straightforward inquiry would be very productive. If one starts with a premise that a psychological maladjustment (trauma) might be responsible (underlying cause) for such eccentric behavior then how can one expect to affirm this through a casual conversation unless one has training/experience in psychiatric counseling as well as the continued confidence of the subject. In other words, if a gay person became gay, and internalized certain behavioral characteristics of the opposite sex because of previous psychosis and as such, is not even consciously aware of it, then how can you use his/her given explanations for his lifestyle choice if they have no connection to the actual cause, but are rather consciously manufactured justifications that are drawn from other external sources and presented to you.
I agree partly with what you say. I do believe that an increase in homosexuality (coming out) is influenced by society’s attitude towards it and as such, I do believe that it is partially a cause of it (though indirect). But homosexuality has existed even in societies that did not hold such liberal attitudes (I am talking about effeminate/bitchy queens) and I am inclined to believe that an original cause lies within an individual’s psyche (whose efforts in conflict resolution are later encouraged or discouraged from going a certain way by society’s acceptance or scorn). So, for instance, if an individual is recovering from a certain trauma, he may opt for one of several things depending on the choices before him and the consequences that may follow in choosing them (ex: alcohol, love affairs, theft, career choices, etc.). I agree that now, it is possible that one may become gay simply by choice (since it is now becoming an acceptable and sufficient justification for one to become gay simply by the virtue of choice); but even here you cannot completely escape psychological reasons for making such a choice, though such reasons might be of slightly different nature (reminds me of kids choosing to become emo’s). Any kind of deviant or eccentric behavior, as far as I am concerned, has underlying strong psychological reasons; and here my attention is mostly drawn to selective idiosyncrasies of gay behavior (bitchiness, superficiality, etc.).
Okey. I was thinking of softer bitchy gay (who loves to pretend more feminine style)
Viewing the video, and reading some opinions posted there, I feel that this guy is pretty frank and has balanced reasonable view. afterelton.com/blog/michaelj … ment-33270
But I think there are so many variations even in the bitchy gays that it’s not really desirable to point finger to a single potential cause. In many cases, probably it’s a mixture of several different causes/factors of different proportion for each person.
It’s true that they may or may not be aware of the cause by themselves, and they may not tell it honestly even if they knew.
Also, I agree that it requires certain skill to obtain useful information from ANYONE.
When I was doing teaching job, part of my task was to place some pressure (sometime lots of pressure) on the candidate to see how they react, especially how they perform when their surface mind can’t function due to panic/stress/fatigue/etc.
Also, we trained candidates so that they can perform normal and emergency procedures even when they surface mind looses the control.
So, I’m familiar with how to put pressure and how to interpret their reaction, and then use these information for introducing chain of action into the the area of the mind adjacent to subconscious region.
You can use similar techniques in casual interview and obtain information that may help you in forming your opinion, if you want. Often, human beings are more honest and yield more reliable information when they are reacting negatively, when their usual actings/covers/masks of surface mind are dropped, at least a bit.
Also what they try to avoid is often something closer to what caused theirs “problems” (or characters).
For example, you can ask series of questions, and see which question they tend to answer and which question they tend to avoid.
By gathering informations like this, you can make an illustration/chart of what the person try to avoid/hide, and it can be related to one of the core issue of that person.
I apply these to myself, too. I mean I observe myself when I react (negatively and positively) and gather the data to see the thing I’m trying to avoid/attract, and why. It’s like drawing subconscious pressure pattern by tracing/tracking back the vectors of surface reactions/thought. Once you get used to, it’s pretty handy for many leaning about self and others.
I thought you might be able to apply something like this with bitchy gays, when I suggested asking directly to them.